


death at daybreak

by koizillaa



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, F/M, Minor Mikasa Ackerman/Eren Yeager, is this the secret relationship AU?, somewhat of a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-18 16:54:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29861160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/koizillaa/pseuds/koizillaa
Summary: Mikasa knows she should leave.
Relationships: Mikasa Ackerman/Jean Kirstein
Comments: 8
Kudos: 68





	death at daybreak

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a companion to "bed of thorns", but can be read as a standalone.

Mikasa knows she should leave.

Though the thought has been echoing in her mind for longer than she’d like to believe, she remains very still as his weight shifts on the bed, the covers rustling with the motion. She doesn’t resist as she feels her body be pulled closer to his, swept further into his embrace like a raft in the tides. 

Jean breaks the silence with a faint little sigh that she would have missed if she had been breathing just a little bit louder. The hand that had been draped over her shoulder comes up suddenly to cradle her head, the other rests just over her tailbone. 

It's a funny sensation, a subtle warmth that radiates from his palm turning searing hot where his fingers meet her naked skin.

This isn’t the first night she pretends to sleep until his breathing evens and his body relaxes around her. She’s done it enough times to know that he does it too.

She waits and listens for another second, a part of her ritual, just to be sure, then wriggles to free an arm with the precision of the soldier she is. She’s careful not to make a sound. Jean looks so peaceful in slumber it would be sinful to rouse him. If she concentrated, she thinks she could hear his heartbeats. 

Her hand comes up to dance over his cheek. Not quite touching - just close enough to feel the warmth. This, too, she does often enough to know the exact distance to keep between her fingers and his skin.

The first time, she had miscalculated by a millimeter and accidentally grazed his chin. She had pulled away as if she had been burned, and after holding her breath for what felt like hours, she’d given in to the temptation to do it again. 

The first time had been nothing like she had imagined for her first time.

It hadn’t hurt, not in the way other girls would always describe it whenever the subject was brought up. It had been terrifying, but less like throwing herself at the mouth of a beast and more like submerging her head in the sea, allowing herself to venture into the unknown, the salt making her eyes sting in a somehow pleasant way. It hadn't been painful. 

It hadn’t been Eren.

She had been shamefully aware of that. From the way Jean undressed her slowly to the blur of hitched breaths and kisses lost over curves and planes and spaces that followed; everything about it said: _not Eren_. Once - not long ago -, the very notion would have been unthinkable.

But Mikasa distinctively remembers making her way back to her quarters in a dreamlike haze, relishing the soreness of her body almost giddily. It wasn’t until she set foot in the mess hall in the morning that she felt her chest clench painfully.

Eren has always been the easiest person to locate in a room - her eyes are trained to seek him out. The thought of sitting next to him with the scarf he’d given her wrapped around her neck to hide a trail another man had left on her body made her feel outright sacrilegious.

The other option would be to join Sasha and Connie at the table she knew for sure Jean would be soon. 

Jean, and those eyes that looked at her so, so adoringly. Jean, whose lips moments ago had kissed all of her in something like worship, whose arms had kept her so, so warm against the cold of the night.

How could she regret it? How could she regret being held, touched in every way she had ever yearned for? How could she regret those warm hands cupping her face like was something to be treasured? 

What did it mean that she didn't?

Mikasa had never been one to run from hard work, but the weight of those questions seemed too much for her to bear, and when finally Jean found her and _asked_ , looking at her with those _eyes_ , she could not give him her answer. She didn’t know it herself.

It didn’t have to mean anything, she reasoned. Nothing had to change. She could keep those sweet memories in her pocket and look at them every once in a while, and so could he. All her life daydreams and fantasies had been enough for her to get by, and nothing had to change.

Her restraint and resolve did not last. It seemed that now that she got a taste of everything she longed for, Mikasa couldn’t stop herself from wanting more. 

(She didn’t want to.)

She’d had exactly two conversations about her situation. 

The first, with Sasha, five or six days after, was bittersweet and annoying.

“So you’re not sad because you slept with Jean… but because you liked it that you slept with Jean?” Sasha asked with her brows nearly hitting her hairline. “Okay. Nevermind. That kind of makes sense.”

“Don’t make fun of me.” Mikasa tucked her chin deeper into the symbol of her shame.

“I’m not! I promise. I think it’s great that you slept with Jean, actually - ” a wince, “Sorry. Wording.” She scratched her chin. “Jean… he’s a good guy. And I think you deserve to be with someone good. Someone who can make you feel good -”

“ _Sasha_.”

“Ah, _shit_ , wording. God, what’s with me today?” Sasha pulled in a good lungful before speaking. “My point is, you shouldn’t feel bad for wanting that. And Jean lo - he _cares_ so much about you. He always has. Too much for his own good, to be honest.”

Oh, Mikasa knew all about that, and if she hadn’t, Jean would have professed it that very night, when he let her in again even after she had refused him and pushed him away. When he held her with such tenderness she could have wept, not a single question asked.

When he kept on doing so every night since.

( _Mikasa,_ he whispered, his hands softly brushing her hair back as she shuddered beneath him. _Not Eren_ , her traitorous brain reminded her, and she could tell from his face that Jean knew it too. And still his steady pace never changed, never faltered. It was more reassurance than she had any right to.)

Mikasa wondered what she could possibly have done to deserve such unfailing adoration. Every time she saw the hurt in his eyes, she was less convinced it was something good.

( _It’s not Eren_ , she thought, _but I don’t want him to be._

She imagined this moment should be liberating, but Mikasa only felt utterly terrified.)

It would be so easy, she always thought in the morning before she left him, to lay her head on his chest and simply fall asleep. It came in waves of temptation: _give in, give in, give in_. 

But she didn’t get to do this. Staying would be too much of a promise, giving him to hope for something she couldn’t offer. Though she supposed if she really wanted to spare him the pain, she was already much too late. 

So Mikasa turned around and closed the door behind her, knowing very well she would be back the next time the sun came down.

The second conversation had been with Armin, and it had taken a lot longer to happen. 

Maybe because Armin had always borne witness to her loyalty to Eren as something that cemented the very foundation of her, and telling him felt too much like confessing a sin.

When she finally did, his response had been typical; as unpredictable as it was wise. As uncomfortable. He’d looked her in the eyes as if trying to see into her soul and said:

“You can still love Eren even if you don’t belong to him.”

“You are not betraying him.”

“You can let yourself want someone else.” 

“I don’t know how to do that”, she said. Ever since they were children, Mikasa believed herself fated to want Eren forever, and her conviction of that had never faltered before. 

But when Armin pressed a kiss to the side of her head she realized that they weren’t little kids anymore. They had grown, loved, and lost hundreds of times over.

“You don’t have to have everything figured out yet”, he frowned, “but don’t lead Jean on if you don’t truly think you want him either.” Unlike Sasha, Armin didn’t try to soften the blow. “He loves you too much to deserve that.”

Mikasa felt her cheeks _burn_.

She knew how terrible it was to carve her name into his side little by little, to brand him _mine mine mine_ and not allow him to do the same. But Jean had always gladly accepted just however much she was willing to give. No matter how little. No matter how unfair.

“I... I’ve talked to Sasha about this, but please don’t tell anyone”, she said. _Don’t tell Eren._ “Not just yet.” 

“Of course.” Armin leaned his head on her shoulder, and she pretended the taste of guilt in the back of her throat wasn’t about to choke her.

She still could feel it whenever she lingered on the doorway for a bit too long and stared at Jean’s sleeping form a bit too wistfully. _Give in, give in, give in._

 _I don’t know how to do that_ , she had thought, _to let myself want someone else_. 

But tonight coming undone had felt like forgetting how to breathe, and in her mind _Jean_ , in her body _Jean_ , in her heart _Jean_. And now she’s tracing the planes of his face, every feature already committed to her memory, and she finds herself smiling without meaning to. He looks so tranquil in her eyes, and Mikasa finds herself drawn to the promise of comfort, to the promise of rest.

The world is brightening; dawn is at their doorstep, and Mikasa knows she should leave, but she wants it to slow down, she wants to stay just a little longer. 

The sky wasn't broken, there was no earthquake. Mikasa just thought: _oh_.

Oh.

She should leave, but she wants to give in. 

Give in, and wake up to this man who wants her in all the ways she can’t understand, who thinks her flood is as safe as a pond and doesn’t care that he could drown in both. 

Give in, because she _wants_ him, she wants _him_ , she wants him right back.

Here she is now. All grown up.

She doesn’t know what the morning will look like. She doesn’t know how Jean will react to seeing her in his bed after waking up alone for so long, and she doesn’t know what it will change, but Mikasa is not so scared anymore. 

_It would be so easy,_ she thinks, _to lay my head on his chest and simply fall asleep._

_(Give in, give in, give in.)_

She thinks: _I want to lay on his chest and fall asleep._

So that’s exactly what she does.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure if I'm satisfied with this, but @llgf (if you are reading, thank you darling!) prompted me to write some insight on Mikasa's perspective and I just had to. Bed of thorns is *meant* to be angsty, but I thought I'd give everyone who commented for a happy ending a bit of an optmist twist as a treat :)


End file.
